JITC Letter from the Editor - March 2020

Dear JITC Readers,

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global emergency of unprecedented scale, placing an incredible burden on the healthcare system in every affected nation. As JITC readers, you are at the forefront of the outbreak, and, on behalf of the journal as well as SITC as a whole, we wholeheartedly offer gratitude for your ongoing efforts while wishing health and safety for you, your families and your patients.

Publication at JITC continues with this March edition of the JITC digest, which spotlights our commitment to publishing high quality scholarly work in a variety of formats. The journal is quickly becoming not only a leading repository of original research papers in the immunotherapy field, but also a go-to source for top-tier reviews and cutting-edge short hypotheses and case reports.   

Original research articles in this month's JITC digest are similar inasmuch as they describe processes for building tools, but they originate from opposite ends of the translational research spectrum. In a fully computational work that performed all experiments in silico with publically available datasets, Jie Sun and colleagues identify a long non-coding RNA signature as an indicator of immune cell infiltration in non-small cell lung cancer that was predictive of patient outcomes and response to checkpoint blockade. The other paper, from Ssu-Hsueh Tseng et al., describes extensive and elegant "wet" lab work to develop and validate a novel genetically induced mouse model of peritoneal metastasis in high-grade serous carcinoma.

Publishing excellent reviews is a priority for the journal, and we're proud this month to feature a comprehensive discussion of adenosinergic signaling in tumor immunosuppression with a focus on the potential of CD39 as a potential target for checkpoint therapy by David Allard, Bertrand Allard and John Stagg. This is part of JITC's growing Immune Checkpoints Beyond PD-1 review series.  

Finally, Esther Lutgens and Tom Seijkens present a hypothesis that checkpoint inhibition could promote the inflammatory processes in the vascular wall that drive atherosclerosis progression—a concept that merits further study.

As JITC continues to grow and thrive, the efforts and insights of the journal's peer reviewers are always appreciated. It's this "behind the scenes" work that ensures JITC remains the leading journal in the immunotherapy field. If you would like to support the journal while also gaining the many benefits of being a peer reviewer, we are welcoming applications, which you may submit through the SITC Volunteer Portal.

Best regards,

Pedro J. Romero, MD
Editor-in-Chief, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer

To view the entire March 2020 JITC Digest, please click here. 

JITC Letter from the Editor - February 2020

Dear JITC Readers,

Welcome to the February edition of the JITC digest. The journal continues to grow and thrive, publishing impactful research across the entire spectrum of the diverse and interdisciplinary immunotherapy field. The articles in this month's digest highlight innovative approaches to overcoming longstanding challenges in cancer immunotherapy, and will surely spark important conversations moving forward.

I'm thrilled to report that this month's digest features three papers from one of the journal's new sections, Immune cell therapies and immune cell engineering—a burgeoning area that continues to push boundaries in terms of advancing scientific understanding and improving patient outcomes.

The highlighted articles feature somewhat "outside-the-box" cell therapy strategies, two of which could have exciting implications for the treatment of solid tumors. In elegant preclinical models, Rahul Suresh et al. demonstrate robust anti-tumor activity by adoptively transferred gene-edited immature myeloid cells. In a different tactic, the feasibility of generating PD-1-deficient effector memory T cells specific for melanoma antigens was demonstrated by Lucine Marotte and colleagues.

Although cell therapies have a well-established role in the treatment of hematologic malignancies, relapse remains common. In an attempt to improve outcomes, Benjamin Derman et al. demonstrate two effective strategies to significantly reduce and delay T regulatory cell recovery after autologous stem cell transplant in a pilot study of 15 patients with multiple myeloma.

In addition to the exciting articles in the cell therapy section, be sure to read the paper by Shibin Qu et al., describing a novel approach to tumor ablation that causes the release of non-denatured neoantigens and damage-associated molecular patterns capable of potentiating the efficacy of checkpoint blockade for non-immunogenic tumors in mouse models.

Our field keeps moving at a tremendous pace! If you'd like to join in to real-time conversations about the latest research and you're active on social media, be sure to take a moment to follow the official JITC Twitter handle, @jitcancer.  

Best regards,

Pedro J. Romero, MD
Editor-in-Chief, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer

To view the entire February 2020 JITC Digest, please click here.